So clothes warm the player, this is fine, but some like turbans, maybe a craftable cape, ect, should also insulate the player from the heat?
The current method of wearing as little as possible during summer irks me, a straw hat should insulate the head from heat, there should be other clothing that does similar things.
Actually is it possible for clothing to have a negative insulation stat?
I mean clothing should never magically make the player colder, we need a flexible system that allows for /some/ clothing to insulate from both cold and heat
The current mechanics for temperature work, but there are many flaws when it comes to summer or hotter temperatures.
I mean Iâm by no means even a mediocre coder, but this should be a more simple task of
if body is enough > ideal temperature apply insulation to lower temperature, do not apply item warmth on item in this case?
Iâm not sure, but I canât imagine an umbrella wouldnât help either 
I mean you could have a vest made of blocks of ice and that would definitely make you colder. (They use it sometimes when exploring very hot caves)
I imagine youâd just have a flag on clothing that indicates it insulates from the heat, akin to the âkeeps you dryâ flags. I think you might need to add more stuff to the item UI to be able to show the insulation value.
Youâd also need a way to make it not stack. The umbrella one would probably be the hardest to implement, as I donât think thereâs any framework for having held items affect your temperature (other than pockets for hands)
Umbrellas and sunhats could possibly be set up to treat the temperature as if the player was inside while worn during summer, to mimic protection from the sun. Most other clothing wonât give any actual cooling, with the possible exception of things like robes, dusters, ponchos, and other things that are normally worn in hot/desert areas. Perhaps a âThis item helps keep you coolâ flag that applies the warmth value of the clothing as negative?
A vest made with gel segments could be frozen in a minifridge to temporarily get a fairly large negative warmth value. That would be a more modern solution and could be reasonably crafted, while a more high tech âactive cooling suitâ could be found, which would use fans and water pumps to disperse heat from the wearer while powered.
âPlannedâ as in, I have described an insulation system (as opposed to warmth one) few years ago.
The problem is, it would require a ton of math to implement.
Having items provide negative heat would be much easier, though it wouldnât solve the problem for long and would make a proper system (insulation) harder to implement.
Umbrellas and sunhats could possibly be set up to treat the temperature as if the player was inside while worn during summer
in summer all the indoor locations are actually hotter than outside, possibly because all the walls in cataclysm are just a bunch of 2x4s and rocks.
Iâm also imagining that power armor would have some sort of cooling. A thought that just occurred to me is to maybe look at how the temperature CBM is implemented. This wouldnât be directly suitable for clothing, but could be a step in the right direction when it comes to implementing umbrella âinsulationâ
I forgot insides were hot in summerâŚ
In that case it would just have to apply a negative heat to the whole body, assuming sunny/clear weather.
Power armor and the Internal Climate Control CBM both use the same system. They apply some sort of climate control status that evens out your temperature either way, but itâs limited and applies to the whole body. Applying that to a hat would be overkill, when it only works of the weather is sunny.
I almost feel like Iâm asking a rhetorical question, but is all the complex math to make things super realistic really necessary?
Is it even a question of making things âsuper realisticâ? The impression I get is that the warmth system isnât perfect (the reason this thread got so much attention) and that they had an idea for a better system that they havenât implemented (yet?).
I get that some people dislike that Cataclysm tries to devote some energy to realism, but shouldnât any attempt by the developers to create better, more complete systems be considered a good thing?
I like how Rimworld handles it, perhaps look into the code for that, from memory it was lua but you should be able to decipher the math, we need depth, complexity only makes the game less comfy to play.
As I said, Iâd be happy with a system that simply goes, okay the playerâs body temperature is above this amount, ignore the warmth values of this item and reduce them by x?
So other items that donât have some insulate tag will still warm the player, but insulating items will help balance everything out.
Also applying extra heat indoors when the walls arenât more solid kinds could make gameplay more interesting I guess
Perhaps we could make certain items have a negative value, but only when the character is subject to âsun glareâ, like the kind that glare protection helps against? It seems like most of what sun hats and umbrellas do is keep the direct sunlight off of you.
Iâm not talking about realism, which Iâd gladly ditch.
The problem is having the system actually work with existing items, weather, mutations and so on.
For example, fires. Fires are relevant to game balance, not just gimmicks.
Itâs not exactly hard, just a lot of work to check every weird case.
A simpler idea: a multiplier to temperature changes, via probability or multiplier. Perhaps ignored for some changes (a straw hat should not protect against fire for example). Seems like itâd be easier to implement, and while some clothing could work against hot and cold, others could work only against one. Seemingly simple +/- check on temperature deltas soundâs a lot easier than full reworking internal mechanics. Could be linked to an âinsulatingâ quality, so fire suits and winter gear could have a grossly high value. This would also de-link warmth from insulation, so while a straw hat could insulate, it wouldnât keep you warm.
that doesnât really make much sense. Sure the deltas will arise when you go near fire but most cases the temperature is a function of the weather. Plus, adding checks on deltas is reworking the internal mechanics.
Right now, temperature is applied to the bodyparts and then clothing is used to provide warmth. If the resulting number is in the comfortable range, then weâre good. If you have to keep track of deltas, now you have to have some sort of history of which deltas were applied so that you can have consistent temperature as you, say, enter and exit a building in winter.
I can already forsee some weird exploit of entering buildings, unequipping or equipping clothing and exiting buildings to get your warmth down to the point where you can run around in heavy survivor armor in the summer. I donât think using deltas is the right idea.
The previous idea of using an insulation value and a warmth value which pretty much respectively decreases and increases warmth is most likely the solution here, but figuring out when insulation is applied and such is where the aforementioned maths comes in. I guess the naive approach is just
if temp > 25 warmth = ceil(25, temp - insulation) else warmth = <regular temp calculations>
which would be incredibly shit and probably a massive oversimplification of how the temperature system works.
Another tangentially related thing, the characters in cataclysm are terrible when it comes to hot weather. They feel hot when the air temperature is 24 and theyâre wearing mostly nothing. As an Australian, 24 is what I set my air conditioning to. If the air temp is 24, I can comfortably sleep under my quilt.
Speaking as someone from a place that actually sees winter, that translates to 75 degrees, which I would consider a touch warm, but not uncomfortable. You shouldnât be at risk of being hot until the mid 80s.
I also keep my thermostat between 70F and 75F in the winter. I am a little more south than New England, in VA, so we have milder winters. FWIW.
So as it is now, things like umbrellas and straw hats do not help reduce heat? Is it just glare while in direct sunlight that they help from?
I think youâre very confused. Thereâs always an attempt for the game to get you from your temperature to weather temperature, and by definition, reducing this rate is changing the deltas. Thereâs absolutely no need to track a history for any sense. Currently, buildings to provide a straight reduction towards comfortable, which if converted into insulation, would make things make much more sense. Thereâd also be a significant simplicity of how temperature calculations could be done i.e. make a fire, take off clothing and be near fire to get warm, put clothing back on and run around. If buildings were changed to provide insulation instead of straight cooling, the system would work properly. Thatâs kinda the point of the building, it would insulate you, but itâs senseless that it could ever put you at a temperature beyond your clothing/environment. The opposite would make sense, that if you were hot and ran into a building, the sun would no longer be on you (a smaller straight warmth value that can change with weather), you could be insulated (pretending we have lowered air flow), and there would be a use for âcold generatorsâ. If you thought about it more,its a completely sensible outcome of being cold and then wearing warming things: youâre not instantly hot from wearing insulating things.
In a very realistic sense, having warmth values to things is nonsensical, since only rare things like heating pads or cooling electronics actually have a temperature different than the rest of the world. All the rest of our clothing is purely insulative.
From a mechanics standpoint, maybe thatâs how it should be treated: we generate x units of heat, the temperature delta is based on our current body temp and weather, then we have a maximum change rate from our current of x + delta, scaled or ignored by the insulating factor(s).